


we'd up and fly if we had wings for flying

by aceofdiamonds



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, F/F, Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-23
Updated: 2014-05-23
Packaged: 2018-01-26 07:03:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1679105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceofdiamonds/pseuds/aceofdiamonds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>aged four is when they meet. thirteen is when things get complicated. fifteen is when everything feels perfect and eighteen is when it all goes wrong.</p><p>a story of friendship and love and picking up the pieces when the worst happens</p>
            </blockquote>





	we'd up and fly if we had wings for flying

**Author's Note:**

> i’m not really in the fandom anymore i’ve just been working on this for months? i listened to [this](http://8tracks.com/sarella/girl-meets-girl) playlist and a lot of lana del rey while writing this. title is from not in nottingham from robin hood more specifically the [mumford and sons cover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaQtKZUKlVg) which is great and i’m finding it hard to stop listening to
> 
> i'm slowly making a playlist to go along with the fic. the left click on my laptop isn't working because i spilt blackcurrant juice on it which just makes everything extra hard and so i need more time with rearranging songs, but eventually, there will be something, probably with a lot of lana del rey.
> 
> edit: [i finally made a playlist](http://8tracks.com/aceofdiamonds/we-d-up-and-fly-if-we-had-wings-for-flying)! all female singers apart from 5sos because _i’ve got your name tattooed in an arrow heart_ came so close to being the title and i can’t let it go
> 
> with the warnings? that doesn't come into effect for maybe 3/4s of the fic so if major character death isn't something you want you can definitely read a lot of it before it happens

Louis and Niall meet one breezy afternoon in the middle of August. They line up quietly with all the other new kids ready for their first day of school and when they get paired together at a table near the corner they smile shyly and say hi. 

Or, Niall says it kind of shyly, Louis mostly shouts it. Her mum doesn't need to tell her how to make friends. She was _born_ ready.

Niall's got long blonde hair and a cluster of freckles under her eye that Louis thinks looks a bit like a spider. But in a nice way. She learns that Niall's funny accent is Irish, that she moved here two years ago with her mum and big brother, and that she's got three cats and a dog. Louis's only got a hamster and some fish but she's got two sisters so it all sort of balances out. 

At break they sit over by the grass and try to make pretty little bracelets with the daisies. Niall breaks off a stem and chews it up, sticking her tongue out when Louis demands proof, and, seeing this as some sort of initiation, Louis pulls out some grass and makes it rain on Niall, the green scattered through her hair making her look like some tiny princess. They make a pact there and then to be best friends forever by linking their pinkies together and when Louis's mum comes to collect her at the end of the day she drags Niall over to meet her, jumping up and down with her hand wrapped tightly round Niall's. 

The first day of school, it’s such a classic way of meeting your best friend, isn’t it.

.

When Louis turns seven she has a pool party and invites nine girls from their class then spends most of the time playing zombie mermaids with Niall behind the slide, laughing and laughing until her sides hurt and Niall has tears running down her cheeks. 

She pulls Niall in beside her when it's time to do the cake, snorting so hard at Niall conducting the round of happy birthday she snuffs out one of her candles by accident.

When she goes to blow out the rest she spends her wish on her and Niall being best friends all the way through their lives until they're old and grey and complaining about the weather and their bad knees even though it’s so clearly going to happen it seems a waste of a wish. When she opens her eyes Rosie from their table asks what she wished for but she locks up her mouth and pretends to shove the key into Niall's mouth because everyone knows wishes don't come true when they're said out loud.

.

Louis's dad leaves when Louis is seven and a half, right when the sun is at its hottest and brightest. When she tells Niall about it she calls him daddy even though she's never called him that before. She rolls the term around in her mouth a few times then spits it onto the pavement in between both of their feet. _Daddy_. He doesn't deserve the sweetness that comes with that. Her father left her mother and her three baby sisters and Louis.

It's sunny enough that Louis can steal her mum's sunglasses and hide the tiny tears that are clinging to her eyelashes.

.

They go to the pool a lot that summer. They practice handstands for hours on end, demanding retries when they get a seven instead of a nine out of ten and when they get all pruny they crawl on to the chairs by the side and split a Coke. On these breaks Louis likes to pretend she’s one of the older cool girls along the other end of the row all lying with their pretty bikinis and sunglasses that hide half of their face. Niall burns easily, she’s always slathering on sun cream, the smell that stays with Louis for hours after.

On the way back from the pool Niall disappears off the wall alongside the edge of the road with a strangled yell caught in a laugh and when Louis peers over to see what’s happened she sees Niall lying in the long grass with her arm sticking out at a funny angle. There’s a cut running down her forearm, too, the blood making Louis’s head spin, but she promises Niall she’ll just be back and runs all the way home to get her mum who’s a nurse and can tell her if Niall is going to die or not.

"Of course she's not," her mum tells her, scooping up a kid with one hand and ruffling Louis's hair with the other. She pulls the door closed behind her with one foot, somehow balancing her first aid bag against her hip. If Louis ever wants kids she hopes she gets the superhuman mother gene her mum has. "Niall's got a while to go yet," she says as she leads them down the street. "The most she'll have is a cast which you'll no doubt graffiti within the first hour."

Niall disappears off to the emergency room with her mum who tells Louis again that no, Niall is not going to die. The person in question is waving from the back seat with her non-injured arm, the smile on her face disturbingly lucid. Louis's always been the dramatic one.

She rocks from side to side at the dinner table, scooping up her spaghetti with her left hand just to see what it would be like to have to use the wrong side for everything. Fizz giggles into her hand when she spills her spoonful down her t-shirt. Her mum tuts and sticks a piece of kitchen paper in her collar but a car pulls up next door just at that second leaving the paper floating to the ground as Louis leaps up and runs over the window.

"No. Finish your dinner, Louis."

"But!" Niall looks up at the knocking on the glass, her face splitting into a grin. She holds up her arm that's covered in a bright green cast and gestures for Louis to come over. "Mum, Niall needs me!"

"And she'll still be there after you've eaten your spaghetti. Do you know how long that took me to make this afternoon?"

"You always tell Moira it's such a quick and easy recipe -- half an hour _tops_ ," Louis sulks, sliding down on her seat.

When she's shoved as much pasta in her face as she can and has been excused she sprints over the grass to Niall's stopping just short of barrelling right into the door.

“What took you so long?” Niall asks when Louis jumps on the bed, jostling Niall and her cast enough for a grimace to flash across Niall’s face. She holds up the paper bag nestled in the covers beside her. “Want some chips? My mum let me get large because I’m _injured_.” She says this cheerfully, said chips clutched in her hand. “The nurse let me pick the colour, do you like it? There was a nice red one you would’ve liked but this green -- it’s like the Irish flag, see?”

Louis ducks away from the neon cast being waved in her face, swiping a handful of chips from the bag. “Does it hurt?”

Niall shrugs. “A bit. It’s kinda like someone’s holding my arm really tightly. I have to keep this on forever.”

“Everyone at school’s going to want to sign it,” Louis points out. They’re going to ruin it with all their scribbles.

“D’you want to sign it first? You can have all down this side if you want.”

When you’re seven and a half and still miserable over your dad leaving and all you want to do is create some havoc with your best friend this sounds a bit like an I love you.

.

Niall sees this thing on TV, this ritual that binds you together forever using magic and blood. They sit cross-legged at the bottom of Louis's garden and prick each other's fingers with the sewing needle Niall stole from her mum. The pain is sharp and fleeting and Louis thinks she is probably imagining it but when they hold their fingers together it hurts a little less.

"Blood sisters," Louis says with a grin before she wipes the blood along her bottom lip, cackling when Niall squeals.

.

They don’t speak for three hours just after Niall turns eight because she _promised_ Louis could have a shot of her new rollerblades and best friends don’t break promises.

Louis spends the time building caves with the rocks in her garden and pesters her sisters to play warriors with her. Niall tells her later that she fell off her skates four times and she wished Louis had been there because it would’ve been funnier that way.

It’s their longest fall-out yet.

.

For her tenth birthday she uses up her birthday wish on asking the fairies to please make her mum's new baby be a boy because she's got three sisters already and a boy might be a bit more interesting. She hopes Dan, her mum’s new boyfriend might be the turning point. You know, different ingredients, different results.

"Brothers are dumb," Niall assures her three months later when Louis tells her about her new baby sister. "Greg smells and he never lets me borrow his football, at least you'll get to share clothes when you're all older."

"We're not older yet," Louis points out. She scuffs her shoe along the pavement, scowling. "They never want to play football with me."

"That's what you've got me for."

“Yeah but you suck at it.” She pulls Niall into a headlock, dragging her along the street, Niall's hands grabbing at her hair, her laughter filling in all the air around them. It makes Louis giggle and trip, her grip tightening around Niall's neck and then loosening enough for Niall to wriggle free and jab at her stomach until they both fall to the ground.

They lie there, side by side, watching the streetlights flicker on one by one. Niall keeps laughing and laughing until she’s breathless and when Louis turns her head she sees the way Niall’s hair is fanned around her head like a halo, like sunshine. Louis breathes in then out again, her breath whisping out in a swirl.

"Shouldn't you girls be inside?” Their nosy neighbour from two doors down is standing above them, hands on hips, shattering the spell.  “Your mothers must be wondering where you are."

“Yes, Mrs Burns,” Louis says, getting to her feet with a heavy sigh that her neighbour will probably take the wrong way. “We were just going.”

Niall takes the hand she’s holding out, doing a sarcastic little curtsey when she get to her feet that Louis could never get away with. It’s Niall, though, it’s something to do with being blonde and having the sort of voice that people can’t seem to get mad at.  _“Nice seeing you, Mrs Burns.”_

“Snotty cow,” Louis murmurs under her breath as they walk back the way they came, kicking at Niall’s shin when she snorts. "Nice seeing you, Mrs Burns."

"Shut up. Listen, my mum said she would send over brownies so tell your mum."

“Why’s she making brownies?” Louis pauses with one foot in her door and one out, Niall doing the same fifteen metres to the left.

“The baby, idiot. I dunno, that’s what they do, isn’t it? See you tomorrow, yeah?” Niall waves and disappears inside, the door clicking shut behind her, and Louis should go inside too, she’s letting in a draft, but she stands for a moment longer, tilting her head up to see the light come on at the front left above the kitchen.

.

The air is warm in the south of France. Warm and a little bit salty, like the sea is trying to make a home in her mouth. Louis stands with her feet apart, her arms outstretched, and breathes it all in until she can feel the water slosh in her toes. 

"Have you got enough sun cream on, Louis?" 

Things have been stressful with the new baby and three other kids; Louis has noticed, even if she is one of the kids in question. It was Louis's gran who had said in that voice that means she knows best - a holiday is what they need. Her gran was right, as usual. Her mum sounds happier here, Dan does too when he makes a remark about sun cream making people soft, he never wore any when he was younger and no harm done. 

Louis turns round and drags her feet through the sand until she's standing at the end of her mum's sun lounger. The sea is so nice it's hard to stay out of it. She finds the blue bottle peeking out from under a crumpled t-shirt that she thinks might be Fizz's and squirts a big dollop onto her hand. 

"Whoops. Too much." Phoebe is sitting innocently by her feet, their mum's legs for shade and a bucket for entertainment. Louis reaches down and wipes half of the lotion onto Phoebe's back just where the little pink straps of her bunny swimsuit are pulled over her tiny shoulders. Her sister yelps at the coolness and Louis laughs and jumps away, rubbing in the amount she kept for herself down her arms and across her shoulders. She loves the smell of this stuff.

“Watch none of that splashes all over my towels,” her mum says, tilting her book down an inch to watch Louis add some lotion to her legs. She still has a scab from when she fell off of her bike last week on the way home from school. She rubs some of the cream into the cut because it’s the sort of opportunity that can’t be missed and winces when it seeps into the broken skin. Her mum’s eye roll is almost audible. “Be careful.”

“I am,” Louis insists. “And they’re not even your towels, they belong to the hotel.”

“Alright, smart-alec,” Dan chimes in. “Put some more on Phoebe and Daisy, will you?”

“Why are you not turning Fizz and Lottie into slaves?” One sister is lying out on a beach towel with sunglasses perched on her nose, acting nineteen instead of nine, while the other is creating a sand monster down beside the sea. “I’m _eleven_. I’m not ready to be a parent.”

“And thank God for that.”

Louis aims a half-hearted kick at his sun bed on the way past and misses on purpose. “Can I send a postcard to Niall tomorrow? You said I could.”

“Sure. Don’t spend twenty minutes examining every card this time.” The lady in the shop had shooed her out eventually, shouting something in French. Louis can’t speak any other languages yet; she’s going to start learning French when she starts secondary school after the summer. She panics sometimes when she thinks about being in classes without Niall but then she remembers that she’ll probably be in at least some of them and that Jenna and Sophie and James will all be there too and anyway, this is the perfect opportunity to expand their social circle and she can try out for the girls’ football team that her old school didn’t have and now she’s running out of reasons to be nervous at all.

_To Niall,_

_The sun is SO warm here. Remember that time we had the sponge water fight and my mum said it was unhygenic to chew the sponges and then we both ended up with colds? It’s a hundred times hotter than that day. I saw a boy who looked a bit like you yesterday except he had short brown hair and he wasn't Irish. I asked if his parents were but he said no. I got you a present, I’ll tell you what it is now so you won’t stay up all night wondering what it could be -- a mini candy machine!! And you get these little bubblegum sweets to put in it. It’s so cool. Lottie got one too and the pink ones are definiantly the best ones. My writing is so tiny I hope you can read it. Dan says we’ll probably be home before this cause the post is a bloody shambles haha. See you soon missing you a lot!!!!_

_Lou xxx_

__

.

There's a new kid at school. A boy with comic books sticking out of his bag and a shy expression under his fringe. Louis spots him at break, nudges Niall, nods at the issue of _The Incredible Hulk_ and then pulls her over to where he's sitting alone by the grass.

"Hi!"

He looks up from his book -- a real book this time. jesus -- and smiles. “Hello.”

“Not seen you around before,” Niall says then settles on the ground beside him. Louis follows suit, leaning back onto her elbows. “What’s your name?”

“Zayn,” he says in that same soft voice from before. A bit of quiet will fit in well with the two of them, balance them out.

“I’m Louis and this is Niall,” she says and then holds her hand out for a fist-bump which Zayn meets warily. Yeah, he’ll do.

Zayn carefully folds down the corner of the page he’s on and then shuts the book, smiling again. “Nice to meet you. I didn’t expect to meet anyone on me first day.”

“Well now you’ve got us,” Niall beams, showing all of her teeth.

He ducks his head, biting his lip when he smiles. He’s really pretty, Louis notices. Sort of delicate, soulful. “Now I’ve got you.”

“Show us your comics then, Zayn. Friends share.”

“Don’t listen to her.” Niall slings her arm around Zayn’s shoulder and leans in to whisper conspiratorially. “Lou’s a shit sharer.”

Louis kicks at Niall’s ankle, sticking out her tongue when Niall yelps. “One time I brought over a box of Malteasers, a big box right? And it was gone within ten minutes. How many did I get, Zayn? None, that’s how many.”

“Lucky for me I don’t like Malteasers,” he laughs as he pulls out _The_   _Hulk_ and three issues of _Flash_. Niall picks up the one on the top carefully, her chipped nails contrasting with the red on the cover. “You like the Flash?”

“Mm. My favourite’s Batman. Classic,” Niall replies and Zayn nods, understanding.

Louis grins, digging her nails into the soil. “You’re alright, Zayn. You know. For a boy.”

Zayn laughs and it feels like a beginning.

.

"Andy Blake is telling everyone he's going to kiss me at lunch tomorrow," Louis announces the second she marches into Niall's room. She throws herself on to the bed and stares up at the ceiling. Beth had told her in English and Louis still hasn’t worked out how to process this information.

Niall's fiddling with her Playstation, her controller wedged into her mouth so her "Do you want to?" comes out mumbled.

"I don't know." She doesn't know. She's not used to this sort of thing. Is thirteen the age you start liking boys? Girls at school talk about them sometimes, how they want to hold their hand and be walked to class but Louis's never thought about them like that. Niall's never mentioned it either. "It's Andy Blake. He kisses everyone."

"He kissed Jenny Higgs behind the P.E block last week," Niall says, flopping down next to Louis. She's still got her uniform on, her knee socks brushing against Louis's thigh. "Have you done it before?"

"You know I haven't." Like she said, she's never really been interested. She wonders suddenly if Niall has and has kept it from her, dismissing the thought instantly. "I don't want to be bad at it, like, if I do kiss him."

There's a stretch of silence that settles over them, the hum of the machine and the scratch of cotton on Louis's skin when Niall moves her leg soft on her ears.

"Do you want to try on me? For practice?" She says it quietly, the words almost getting lost before they reach Louis's ear. They make her squirm and blush a little, something jumpy setting up in her belly that wasn't there when she thought about kissing Andy Blake. She tells herself that's just because Niall is right here and Andy isn't.

“You’re sure?”

Niall’s shoulder nudges her when she shrugs, easy. “I haven’t, either, you know. Don’t think I’d be much help.”

“Wouldn’t hurt to try.” Louis raises herself on to one elbow so she can look at Niall from above. Her hair is a mess, falling all around her face, a strand in her mouth, and her eyes are half-shut so Louis can only see the blue if she leans in closer. She lifts her eyebrows in one last question, waits for Niall’s slow nod, another shrug, and then she leans down and presses their lips together. Niall’s lips are soft and a little bit dry and Louis doesn’t know if this is normal or not but she thinks she likes it. She pushes a little more, her heart beating wildly in her chest, because this is her first kiss and it’s happening with Niall. Niall who she’s known for eight years and Niall who is opening her mouth and touching Louis’s lip with her tongue, the feel of it sending a thrill down Louis's back and making her shiver.

“Cool,” Louis says when she pulls back because she can’t sort out the rest of the thoughts in her head. Her lips feel tingly, she touches her bottom one with the pad of her finger, just where Niall’s mouth was. She exhales, wonders if Niall can feel it hit her lips. They're still so close.

Niall’s watching her, her eyes still not all the way open or shut. Louis wants to know if they slid closed when they were kissing, like hers did. Is it an automatic thing or just because they see them do that in all the movies? She kind of wants to try again. Just to see.  

“You taste like chocolate.” Niall says softly, a revelation, like she’s been wondering for a while. Louis was too focused on the way her stomach was reacting, flipping and flopping and making her feel a little bit sick, to really notice the flavour of Niall. Now she desperately needs to know.

“I had a Mars bar on the way round.” Why are they talking in whispers, like nothing can be said too loud else the magic will shatter around them. Because that’s the nearest word to describe everything here -- magic. Something fantastical. Outside the realms of anything they’ve done before.

“Andy might put his tongue in your mouth.” Oh. She had forgotten about him. She’s still hovering over Niall, her hair dropping down to curtain their faces, their own little world. She shifts so they’re touching just at the waist, making sure to keep their chests apart. Niall still doesn’t really have anything in that area but Louis’s one of those lucky ones her mum calls an “early bloomer” and she just doesn’t want to get them mixed up in this already slightly confusing event.

“Maybe we should do it again, with tongue, just so you -- you know.”

“I don’t want him to think I don’t know what I’m doing,” Louis agrees, watching the way Niall licks her lip quickly like she didn’t want Louis to notice. But Louis can’t take her eyes off of her, caught up in it all. She reaches out and moves the strand of hair sticking to her lip, keeping her hand on Niall’s face, her thumb just under her eye.

She smiles then ducks her head down and closes the gap again, her eyes fluttering shut just as she catches Niall’s do the same. It’s different this time, their mouths moving more, under the illusion of knowing what they’re doing. Niall opens her mouth again and this time Louis’s tongue nudges Niall’s tentatively, feeling out of her depth but wanting to keep going. She twists a little so their bodies are flush all the way down, Niall's tongue clumsy and her hands soft on her hips, and for a moment it feels like they’re the only things stopping Louis from floating away. This is huge and exciting and still it feels like nothing wrong.

“Want a game?” Niall asks when Louis feels adequately prepared for tomorrow. She runs her tongue over her lips, trying to hang on to the taste of Niall, memorise the feel of her tongue in her mouth. She takes the controller Niall is holding out to her and, just like that, everything’s the same.

.

Louis lets Andy Blake kiss her under the bleachers the next day for the sake of the experiment she’s set up in her head. He’s clumsy with his tongue, hard where Niall was soft, and he tastes like burger and ketchup. He doesn’t make her feel excited or nervous or scared, just bored. Keeping up appearances she winks at him when he breaks away from her, dragging her hand over her mouth in what she hopes is a subtle gesture to get rid of the spit clinging to her lip, and makes a mental mark in Niall’s margin. The margin that already seems to have a _lot_ of tallies. Shit.

.

She carries this around with her for a while, cradling it inside of her like it’s something fragile, something that can be broken. It's as if Niall is standing under a spotlight all the time, the way Louis's eyes find her in a second across the classroom, cataloguing the way her hips move when she walks down the corridors, along the pavements, how she nibbles on her thumb nail when she's nervous, the way she laughs when Louis imitates their Geography teacher -- a loud peal and then a snort. She thinks she's probably being obvious, doing nothing to hide the look of absolute wonder when Niall does things she’s done a thousand times before like sliding an arm around her shoulders and pulling her against her in an act of defiance against Andy Blake who's accusing Louis of being a tease, and that people might start to whisper about her, whispers that Niall might hear, and so at night she stares at herself in the mirror and works hard to school her expression into something neutral the next time Niall proclaims loudly how much she loves her.

These things she's feeling, see. They're not what's seen as _normal_ and maybe she's not as freaked out as she might expect over the fact that she has some _not just_ _friendly feelings_ towards her best friend -- that'll probably come later, right when she's least expecting it -- but she can't imagine telling anyone about them and so she locks them up tight and tries to pretend they don't exist during the day and then at night she lies in her bed deep down under the covers and relives the feel of Niall's tongue slipping past her lips and how their hips and chests and legs might have slotted together just right if they had practiced again and again.

One night she slides her hand down her shorts, into her underwear, and thinks about what her mum’s Cosmo told her would happen when she finds the right spot. She feels around for a bit, switching fingers to see if that will make a difference, and then sighs and gives up, settling for thinking about the way Niall had kissed her and how she’d felt it all the way down to her toes. Maybe it’s something that comes with maturity or maybe Louis just needs more practice.

It’s Kiera Knightley that pushes her past confusion and into what can only be described as uncharted territory. It's just -- the Pirates of the Caribbean film was supposed to be about pirates and adventure and how cool Captain Jack Sparrow is and yeah, Louis noticed all of that but she kept getting distracted by Kiera Knightley's wet dress and her _face_ and she's so much more than all of the men, no wonder they're falling over her. She has a dream about that wet dress and Kiera Knightley leaning over her; she wakes with an ache between her legs and a feeling of want that she doesn't know what to do with. She’s the one that makes Louis walk around for the next three days in a trance caught in the thought that maybe it’s not just Niall she wants to kiss, maybe she likes looking at other girls, that maybe this is why she’s never been interested in boys anywhere.

This time her revelation isn’t so quiet and calm. This time she sits on the floor by her bed, her magazines with their boy-obsessed advice pages fanned out around her and her nails digging little patterns into her palms where she’s holding too tight, trying to sort out her breathing so she feels less like she’s drowning.

“You’re okay, aren't you, Lou?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You’ve been funny the past couple of days.” Niall shreds a line of paper with her fingers, twisting the pieces into a warped flower. She glances up, catches Louis’s eyes. “I’m worried about you.”

“God. You tell me to shut up half the time and now I’m too quiet for you?” She’s breathing too fast, watching the gap between their knees like something’s going to rise up out of it and spill all of her secrets.

“You can talk to me about anything, you know that, don’t you?”

But this is something she can't talk about with the person she tells everything. How can she possibly say that she thinks about that kiss, that dumb meaningless kiss, all the time and that she wants to do it again and so much more? She can't, that's what.

Adults have this phrase they like to use a lot, that nothing really matters when you're this age and that whatever problem you have is so much smaller than how you've built it up in your head. Louis's calling bullshit on that because she's fourteen and she has a crush on her best friend and if it feels like the world is ending then yeah, it is.

.

She fails a Maths test by one mark. Then she leaves out a whole essay question in English because she can't work out what she's been told to do and that all snowballs into her thinking she can’t do anything. It makes her feel stupid, like some pathetic little girl who _can’t_ do anything, and resolves to change that by making the exact opposite of a smart decision.

Niall blinks when Louis snaps at her the first time and by the fourth unprovoked scathing remark she doesn’t even flinch, her jaw set. This isn’t making Louis feel better at all -- if anything she feels _worse_ because Niall isn't doing anything wrong.

It’s not as though it’s Niall’s fault Louis is failing everything. It’s not anyone’s, really, she’s just in a slump. If anything’s to blame it’s definitely the weather -- it’s been raining for the last month more or less non-stop and Louis’s not religious in the slightest but it’s hard not to think of Noah and his ark full of good people and animals in a time like this. The thought of divine punishment against homosexuality floats across her mind one night when she’s trying to unravel simultaneous equations and that’s when she knows she needs a break and half a pint of ice-cream.

Her Maths resit comes back with a 93% and a big smiley face in the top right corner. See, she’s not being punished at all. The sun’s been trying valiantly to fight through the clouds recently. She’s not saying it’s all connected but it’s definitely a possibility.

She doesn’t even know if Niall will listen to her when she apologises. It comes out somewhere close to a shout as they walk home and when Niall looks up from the ground surprised all Louis can do is shrug and hope that gets it across.  

“Are you talking to me again?”

Yes, she’s dramatic, she knows this, but still, this is like a stab in the heart that she _deserves_. “I didn’t mean to?”

“You didn’t mean to tell me my car drawing looked like a whale?” Niall looks a bit like her mother here in the middle of the pavement with her hands on her hips. Neither of them would appreciate the comparison.

“I don’t deny that,” she says which is true, she was giving her constructive criticism, it just maybe didn’t come out that way. “It did look like a whale on wheels.”

“That’s what I was aiming for,” Niall counters.

“Let me apologise for acting like an arse, okay,” Louis says all in a rush, big hand gestures helping her make her sincere apology extra sincere. “I was stressed and failing everything and I took it out on you when I shouldn’t have.”

Niall eyes her for a long minute then swings her bag down from her shoulder and rummages around in it for that packet of strawberry laces Louis saw her put in at lunch. Then, she had eaten three at a time all the while staring Louis straight in the eyes managing to blink in time with her chewing. She’s good at passive aggression. It’s a quality Louis needs to work on.

She holds the packet out to her now, shaking it when Louis doesn’t immediately take one. She’s chewing gum, actually, and the flavours won’t exactly go, but she can’t turn down a peace offering, not when she should be the one making it in the first place.

“Thanks.”

“Say you’re an arse again,” Niall says through a mouthful of sticky lace.

Louis sighs. “I’m an arse.”

Niall grins. “You’re not really, you know.”

“If you don’t think so then why do you keep making me say it?”

“I think it’s a power thing?” A shrug. “Dunno. Whatever.” She threads her arm through Louis’s and tugs them down the road to the zebra crossing. “So. Are you ever going to tell me what’s up with you?”

The gum and the strawberry laces are mixing surprisingly well -- the sickly flavour is clinging onto the tasteless wad of gum and it’s still sort of disgusting but not the levels she was expecting. “What? There’s nothing wrong with me.”

She can feel Niall looking at her out the corner of her eye so she opens her mouth to go into detail about the taste explosion in her mouth but Niall speaks again first. “Alright. Remember what I said though, about me being here if you need to talk.”

The feeling that has been building up inside of Louis for a while fizzles into something else at that moment and eats away at her insides for the next few days. It taints her thoughts and makes her question everything she says and does and it’s not fair because there’s no point telling Niall about these feelings because it’s probably just a _crush_ and telling her would wreck everything they have for _nothing_ so why can’t she get rid of the guilt that is crawling all over her?

.

“Let’s play Never Have I Ever.”

“Louis, we don’t have any alcohol. Besides, we’ve basically done all the same stuff. It’d be boring.”

Louis pulls herself up until she’s leaning against the wall, her feet dangling off the side of Niall’s bed. She has to crane her neck now to see Niall’s head on the floor just to the side of her feet. She feels easier this way. “Please? I really want to play. We can --” she looks around her desperately, grabbing a packet of chocolate buttons off the pile beside her. “-- we can use buttons, see?”

Niall sighs like this is some huge hardship and throws herself onto the bed, her legs landing in Louis’s lap, and, well, Louis has some big sentences inside of her, the game could go all ways here, she’s right to be weary.

“You start.”

She frowns, her forehead crinkling in the middle. “Never have I ever eaten a bug.”

“That’s cheating!” Louis protests, pointing her finger. “You dared me! And it was only, like, a leg.”

“Still counts.” Niall grins as she rips open the packet. “We’re gonna get so pissed on these.”

Louis crams two chocolates into her mouth, chewing as she plans out her reply. "Never have I ever... broken a bone."

"Oh wow, what a huge forfeit this is," Niall says, stacking up three buttons and biting them like a burger. "Lou, my mum has wine that she won't miss sitting downstairs. Let me make this interesting." She sits up and takes Louis's hand. "Please."

"You're a bad influence, Horan." Alcohol makes thoughts freer, tongues looser. She has to watch. Niall's thumb is stroking the back of her hand. "Go and get it then."

The first few rounds pass quickly with both of them saying things purely for the swig out of the bottle. They've never really had alcohol before aside from a half glass mixed with lemonade at family parties or barbecues in the summer. The wine is slightly sour and sticky and makes Louis's head feel heavy when she leans forward.

"Right. Here's a big one." She takes the bottle from Niall's grip and swallows a mouthful before she continues, spluttering when Niall bats at her hand and tells her she's playing it wrong. "Shh. This was your idea, you can't shout at me."

"Don't get any on my bed. My mum'll bloody kill me," she giggles, leaning into Louis's side. "Go on. Finish the question and give me a drink."

"Never have I ever..." Louis sings and then she pauses, the game-changer sitting on her lips. She could say it right now, all that stuff about Kiera Knightley and Claire from their Maths class and kissing and girls girls girls. She could say it and blame it on the fuzziness of her brain. She looks at Niall, stretches out a hand to touch the hair falling out of the ponytail. Niall watches her with her lips parted, one eye closed, and Louis is hit with a sense of déjà vu. She sits back again, her hand falling between them, and sighs. "Never have I ever been to Italy."

Neither of them move; neither of them have been to Italy, see, and Louis wants to see what will happen next now that there's a heavy silence and the carefulness of two people who know what the others thinking.

What happens next is Niall opens her mouth and leans in just a little, enough for Louis's heart to play catch up with the whirring of her brain, and then Niall's mum shouts up about Louis staying for dinner.

Louis laughs softly when Niall stumbles over her reply because Niall never has trouble speaking, it's something she's very proud about, and Louis wants to know if it has any connection with the way their fingers are linked in her lap.

.

“Look. Zayn sent me one of those Buzzfeed quizzes.”

“Do me. Do me.”

Louis rolls into a sitting position, her legs in basket across from Niall. She’s supposed to be practising if she wants to get onto the football team this year but this is a  _Which Hunger Games character are you?_ quiz which cannot be put off for a moment.

“Is Zayn ever going to get over those books?”

“He accidentally told me Prim dies so he bought me Fruit Pastilles for a week.”

Niall looks up from her guitar and laughs, twanging one of the strings. “Go for it then.”

“Pick a fruit.”

“Kiwi.”

“You’re very loyal,” Louis decides, clicking that option for what word best describes you. Niall sticks her tongue out in reply. “Who’s your favourite Game of Thrones character? Margaery’s not there, by the way.”

“A travesty. Um... Jon Snow.” Niall moves round to lean over Louis’s shoulder, pointing at her answers for the next few. Most of the time Louis predicts the right one in her head just as Niall moves her hand to click it. “Hahahaha look at that flamingo holding the lightsaber! Can you save that picture? Send it to me. Who am I? Gale? I forget what he even does in the last book.”

If Louis moves her head the tiniest bit to the right her cheek will be on Niall’s shoulder. She makes the move, holds her breath, and then Niall shifts into her, her hand warm where it’s resting on her neck. “He helps a lot with the revolution in District Thirteen.”

“Aw yeah. Not bad. Look, see that?  _Especially thanks to that lovely face of yours.”_

“These tests aren’t very accurate,” Louis dismisses with a wave of her hand and then she’s being pushed onto her back and Niall is straddling her waist as she pulls out shreds of grass to sprinkle across her face. Louis yelps, laughing when Niall’s hands move to her waist, her long fingers finding all the places she knows are the most ticklish. “You look more like Haymitch to me.”

Niall squawks, hands fluttering across Louis’s stomach, her arms. Her thumb presses at the crease of her elbow. “Haymitch is a very handsome man. Thank you for that compliment.”

“You’re delusional,” Louis insists before she locks her feet around Niall’s knees and rolls them over. Niall is flushed and breathless beneath her, the stain on her cheeks continuing down to the neck of her t-shirt. Louis watches the rise and fall of her chest and how it seems to synchronise with her own and then gets up before she takes another step in that direction. “Get in goals.”

“You’re forgetting the magic word,” Niall sings, getting to her feet. She has a clump of grass in her hair just above her ear. She picks it out before Louis can make up her mind on whether she should step forward and do it or not. “Gale is so good at football. You’re going down, Tommo.”

She presses a sloppy kiss onto Louis’s cheek as she passes as though to soften the taunt. It takes Louis another few seconds to pick up the ball and follow her across the grass.

.

Niall doesn’t mention boys or girls or anyone else to Louis although Louis’s too wrapped up in hoping it's not noticeable the way she's staring at Briony Quell's thighs as her skirt rides up further and further in Art when she leans back to talk to Connor Muir to pick up on that. She wonders if she should be the one to bring the subject up -- the all mighty Boys, the capital letter in her brain enforcing the mystery surrounding them --, if she should try giggling over the way Roy brushed her arm in the corridor or to gush about Toby's arms, like that might spark Niall's interest. She can't bring herself to do it. Anyway, she's always hated Roy; Niall would see right through her.

Turns out Niall was just holding out for an opportunity for such a conversation; the school dance in the middle of May presents an appropriate setting.

It's a dance a lot of people turn up to and then regret their decision the second bad song into the night. No one is dancing, everyone is grouped in their cliques, and Louis is bored.

"Dance with me," she demands when the first decent song comes on and a couple of people have moved away from the walls and cautiously inched into the perimeter of the dance floor. "Come on. This is a great dress, I refuse to let it be wasted."

Niall laughs and pulls her into the middle, her hand warm on Louis's wrist. "I'm taller than you with these shoes on, look."

"That just means I can see up your nose."

They spin and their heels clatter on the sticky floor and their sudden enthusiasm has half the hall following their lead, a surge moving onto the dancefloor, while the other half back away, retreating to their corners with smirks and rolls of their eyes. Louis ducks under Niall’s arm, twirling her away so her dress flutters around her thighs. Their dresses are short enough to warrant narrowed eyes from the chaperones at the door; Louis twitches hers up another couple of inches and dances faster.

“Can we go outside a minute?” Niall leans in to shout in her ear. “I need some air.”

She leads Niall across the hall with their hands still held tight together. She’s too warm, too, can’t think why. “This better?” she cants her head to the side when they’re leaning on the railings beside the steps going down to the bins.

Niall's tipped her head back, her elbows resting on the cool metal. "Yeah. This is better."

"God, I'm sick of those things. When are they going to get it into their heads that fifteen year olds aren't interested in the Macarena and who's best dressed?"

Niall huffs a laugh, small and quiet out here away from the pounding bass and shrieks. "You were the one that wanted to come."

It's true. She had to make a million promises of ice cream and geography answers to get them here and she doesn't even know why. With the feeling of being so lost lately she just wants a chance to have that familiarity, of the lame songs and watery juice and teachers watching their every move. The last five minutes were an anomaly - proof that if you want something to be great you have to work at it yourself. "When I was younger I thought being a teenager would be different."

"Better?"

"No. Just different."

A beat, then: "Dance with me, Lou."

And so Louis does; she fits her hands round Niall's neck and steps into the bracket made by Niall's arms on her waist, swaying them slowly along to the rhythm of her tuneless humming. She laughs when Niall steps on her foot, her fingers light where Niall's hair is coming loose from her ponytail. It had taken her three tries to get that ponytail high enough for her mum's approval, blonde curls twisting out elegantly in all the ways Niall isn't.

"Louis," Niall murmurs just above Louis's ear. "Can I try something?"

She stops humming, pulls back a little so their eyes meet. She'll need to get higher heels next time, this height difference, however minuscule it is, has thrown her off kilter. “Like what?”

“Something I’ve been thinking about for a while.” And Niall is talking so quietly and there’s a look in her eyes that has Louis nodding and leaning in a little closer.

It’s everything and nothing like she remembers from the last time. She thinks Niall’s lips are just as soft as before but this time they’re covered in lipstick that’ll get rubbed over both of their mouths when Louis tilts her head this way and presses her tongue into Niall’s and there're three rings on her left hand that are cool on Louis's shoulder where her dress is slipping down and this time. This time they're both so sure that this is what the other wants which makes all the difference. They feel like they've grown up since the last time.

.

It's a secret. It's a big secret that even the two people involved don't talk about or acknowledge any more than necessary, instead preferring to communicate in hurriedly close doors and rushed kisses while their families are in the next room, with smothered laughs and startled moans in each other's mouths when a hand goes somewhere new or there’s someone knocking on the door, with texts under the desk and meetings in the toilets on the second floor beside Art when everyone is in class. They’ve always had a code made up of raised eyebrows and winks and the nudge of a foot under the table, that’s, like, standard best friend stuff, but now they’ve got new things they need to say in private across the room -- the new code takes long afternoons shut up in Niall’s bedroom with fingers tracing over skin and meanings kissed onto areas clear for the world to see.

Niall kisses just how she looks, Louis finds. Fun and easy, knowing what she wants and how to get it, her hands moving over Louis's back, her sides, down to her legs, as though she's known how to do this the whole time. Louis is more cautious about the whole thing. She finds herself planning ahead just where her hands should go and if Niall would like her neck kissed right there and what exactly does that sound mean?

"Niall," she says one night after they've watched three Disney films and spent at least half of them stretched out on Niall's bed with Niall sitting on Louis's hips and Louis finding new ways to make her push down so their bodies roll together, a hand moving up her top gaining the best results. She raises herself onto her elbow, one hand on Niall's stomach. “This is okay what we’re doing, right?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I dunno. On TV they always say it’ll ruin their friendship and I don’t want that to happen with us.”

“Louis,” Niall says, sitting up and moving Louis’s hand away from where she’s covered her eyes. “I’m not going anywhere, alright? No matter how this falls.”

“And you don’t think that maybe it’s too good to be true? That we can do this and everything will keep being okay?”

Niall’s mouth is turned down now. Louis wants to reach up and press her fingers to the corners, make it all better, but she can’t get rid of this heavy weight in her stomach. “If you want to stop then just say and --”

“No, I don’t. I’ve wanted this for ages and now it’s happening and I’m -- I just think I’m overwhelmed.”

“If you’re sure...” Niall raises an eyebrow, still uncertain. “I’m going to kiss you now, okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah that’s what I want. Sorry for causing problems and --” and then Niall is kissing her and she forgets anything she was saying before.

.

Back when she was fourteen and crying about being in love with her best friend Louis hadn’t really stepped back and put a positive spin on it, instead focusing on how she would be rejected by everyone she cared about and losing everything around her. She hadn’t imagined knowing the planes of Niall’s body, the dip of her waist that runs into the curve of her hips, the freckles behind her knee, the scar on her shoulder from a crash off of her bike when they were nine. She hadn’t considered the possibility that she would be allowed to touch and now she can’t stop.  

She loves kissing. They kiss until their lips are swollen and red and there’s a delightful ache in Louis’s jaw. There’s something thrilling about kissing for so long their mouths taste the same, mixing together to create something that’s theirs. See, she’s very romantic about kissing. After a month or so, though, it doesn't feel like enough anymore, not when there's a dull heat constantly building deep in her body and between her legs that the lips on her neck and the hand palming her breast can't quite reach. She feels herself rocking down against Niall's hips subconsciously during one of their after-school make out sessions, her eyes rolling back when the sensations lessens and intensifies simultaneously. This is what she was trying for before, when she would fumble clumsily with herself late at night back before she knew Niall felt the same.

She makes her move the next time they've got an empty house, when Niall's mum and brother are staying in the city overnight to check out universities and they've cleared it with Louis's mum for her to stay with Niall.

This time when Niall's hand trails down, her touch feather light on the area of skin where her top has ridden up, Louis slides their fingers together and moves their hands down further until they're on the spot she needs so much. She exerts the tiniest bit of pressure using Niall's hand and that's enough to buck her hips, craving for more.

Niall breaks the kiss then, looking at Louis like she's just given her the world which doesn't even make any sense because Louis is the one balancing on the better end of the deal at the moment. "You sure, Lou?"

And Louis bites her lip and nods, moving their fingers together, down a bit and a little harder, and when she nods again, faster this time, Niall takes a breath and kisses her, hard and sloppy, before extracting her fingers from Louis's hold and slowly undoing the zipper of her shorts.

"I haven't done this before," she says, something similar to a crack in her voice that makes Louis huff a laugh.

"Me neither." Niall is pulling down her shorts, dropping them off the side of the bed, and Louis has come prepared, see, she has her black underwear on, it's _matching_. Niall smiles when she sees it, runs a finger down, so light Louis whimpers. "We can practice together."

"God, Lou." The underwear is coming off now and Louis thinks she might start getting nervous at some point but this is Niall, the person she trusts more than anyone, and she's handling her so carefully as though she'll shatter. "Can I --"

"That's kind of the whole point here, isn't it?" Louis sighs, wriggling so she's closer to Niall. "I want --"

And then Niall is touching her, a finger moving up her folds, brushing against a nub near the top that has Louis gasping out loud at the burst of pleasure that comes with it. Niall touches it again, firmer this time, and then moves down to press her index finger inside of her gently, just up to the first knuckle. She pulls it back out and then slips it in again, a little further this time, the other hand coming up to rub over that spot that makes Louis think she might be somewhere in heaven now.

"Is this okay?" Niall asks, her voice barely audible over the pounding in Louis's ears and Louis can barely keep her eyes open but she catches the smile of utter satisfaction on Niall's lips at the way she's pulling her apart.

"Uh-huh. You're -- yeah, that's fine." She twists and the movement drags Niall's finger along the walls that feel so warm, wet, so she does it again, her hips rocking. "Can you. Oh."

Niall slides another finger in, crossing them and then spreading them apart inside so Louis can feel the hint of a burn that makes her brain buzz. "Like this?"

One hand is curled by her side on the duvet, she can feel her nails making marks on her palm. "Yeah," she manages, "Like that."

The fingers are moving quicker now, more sure of what they're doing, and with Louis's hips they've set up a sort of rhythm. Niall twists them at that moment, Louis moans, so loud in the empty house, and the feeling inside of her is curling stronger and stronger until it feels almost unbearable, Louis hurtling towards it anyway.

Niall presses at that spot again and Louis really needs to look up her mum's Cosmo and find out what that really is because _Jesus_ _Christ_ and then there's something wet, the sensations increasing ten-fold and Louis lifts her head to see Niall's between her legs, her tongue licking hard strokes along her folds, dipping down to fit where her fingers are.

"Fuck." Louis thinks she might cry, her body tenses, the rush in her ears pulling her further and further and then -- it's almost like a wave washing over her, something white bursting on her vision, making her legs shake and her breathing stops for a second before everything comes floating back down. She lies there for a moment, a little stunned from the events, and then she laughs once, a sound made of breathlessness and disbelief.

"Niall," she murmurs, her hand drifting through the air until it meets Niall's head, her hair getting tangled in her fingers. "Jesus, Niall."

And Niall scrambles up Louis's body, the grin on her face so big her eyes have almost disappear. "So you liked that then?"

"How did you --" Her tongue had been on her, doing things Louis had thought about but never realised could actually happen in real life, and --

"Instinct," Niall says then adds: "Plus, I might've read some stuff."

Louis thought she had read some stuff, all for preparation, but she must be looking at the wrong websites. She smiles lazily, her body still thrumming, and curves a hand on Niall's cheek, pulling her down to fit their mouths together. She can taste something there, a sharp, musty flavour that isn't as bad as she would have thought.

"Let me now," she says into Niall's mouth, flipping them over and moving to press a kiss onto Niall's neck. There's a light sheen of sweat settling on Niall's skin, salty when Louis licks first at her collarbone then down to where her vest top has been pushed aside by impatient fingers, the lack of bra underneath helping her mouth over a nipple, the sound Niall makes spurring her confidence. She's done this part before, she knows that Niall likes it when she holds her breast in her hand, her thumb rolling over the nipple, both firm and soft, it's the next part she doesn't know so well.

With Niall's hand careful on her cheek, her shoulder, Louis ducks her head down and sucks a bruise on her hip just where her shorts are slipping down. Then she curls her fingers in the sides and tugs both the shorts and underwear off at once making Niall laugh and kick her legs to push them onto the floor. She's looking at Niall now and maybe when she first started looking at girls she searched online a couple of times just to see what it was like but this is a world away, the pixels on the screen not preparing her for the smell that pulls her in, her nose brushing the inside of Niall's thigh, nor was she warned about how it will feel when she smoothes a thumb over Niall's skin, watching it rise into goosebumps at her touch.

"I'm going to touch you now, okay?" She says, her eyes flickering up to where Niall is on her elbows, watching her, her chest moving with heavy breaths.

"Get on with it then," she replies, a smile slipping onto her face that makes Louis so glad they're doing this together.

She runs her hand down just as Niall had done, eyes focused on the way Niall opens up to her, exposing everything to her. She presses two fingers there at the top, on that spot that had made her see stars, thrilled when Niall reacts similarly, her hips jerking suddenly, and then, her confidence rising and the thought so enticing, she leans in and puts her mouth where her fingers were, her hand on Niall's hip bone just tight enough so Niall doesn't grind onto her face.  She gives a curious lick, her mouth splitting into a grin at both the sharp taste and the way Niall is squirming under her hand, and does it again, harder and quicker. Remembering what else Niall did to her, Louis pulls back a little in order to slide a finger into Niall's entrance, mesmerised by the easiness of it, the feel of her around her finger bringing back the heat to her stomach.

"You're so wet," she murmurs, two fingers now inside, awe clear in her voice. Niall's leg curves in to brush at Louis's shoulder. They're connected in so many ways. She licks stripes along the slit, mouth moving over every area, keen not to miss anything. She recalls Andy Blake's boast of tracing out his name on some girl -- the thought makes her belly flip, the possibility of claiming Niall in such a way. She folds the thought up neatly and sits it in the back of her mind.

"It feels good, doesn't it?" she says, her hand moving faster, wondering if it feels the same for Niall as it did for her. She curls her fingers and Niall makes a noise almost like a squeak, her hips off the bed. "It felt amazing for me. Like nothing I've ever felt before."

Niall makes an attempt at a garbled response and Louis is caught between reaching up and kissing her to feel the words make sense on her tongue and putting her mouth on her again. She's finding it hard to stay away from this new endeavor, a preferable addiction above cigarettes or alcohol. She licks at Niall's inner thigh then along to where her fingers are still sliding in-and-out, stealing a move from Niall when she nudges her tongue along beside them. There's the thought of adding another finger, of removing her fingers altogether and using her tongue to slide in-and-out, there's so many things they can do, so much to try.

She glances up, catching Niall chewing on her lip, her breaths coming in short gasps and she's only experienced this once before, they're both so new at this, but she thinks maybe Niall is almost there. Her response to that is to take that raised nub and suck it into her mouth just as she twists her fingers and Niall falls, a sound coming from her that Louis wants to hear again and again and her thigh flush with Louis's shoulder, tight until she lets out another breath and relaxes, pliant on the bed.

"We need to do that again," Niall says when Louis has folded herself into Niall's arms, her nose at her neck. That smell is in the air, sex, that’s what it is, and it makes her sleepy and happy. "Yeah, definitely."

"I have some ideas," she goes on. She giggles breathlessly when Louis leans up and mouths along her jaw, pressing their mouths together as she wriggles into a sitting position then over onto Niall's lap, knees either side of her hips. They've never been completely naked with each other before, not since they were six and had water fights in their back gardens, and Louis wishes she'd known the way it would feel sooner, the freeness and intensity of their skin. She cups Niall's hip with her hand as she deepens the kiss, squeezing gently, wondering what bruises shaped like her fingers would look like decorating Niall's pale body.

"Why don't we talk about some of those ideas?" she suggests, lowering herself so their bodies are flush from chest to waist. The tightness from before is back in her stomach and if she shifts her hips just like this -- god, how are they supposed to go back to acting like there's nothing between them in public? She's had a taste and now she can feel herself wanting and wanting.

Niall moans when their hips move again. "You're incredible."

She feels a bit like she's on top of the world.

.

“Niall, I’m really happy.”

"Yeah?" And Niall grins and it's looks like the sun. "Me too."

.

They both get jobs the summer before they turn sixteen, Louis at the pool and Niall in a cafe in town. Niall’s saving up for a new guitar because there’s a dent in the one she has just now after she fell off the bed and landed on it a few weeks ago and it doesn’t play as well. Louis’s not interested in musical instruments, she wants her very own car. Even though her mum’s offered to pay for half the only other money Louis has is whatever she’s saved up from birthdays and Christmases over the years, she’s never been the best saver, it’s likely she’ll be at this job for a while.

It’s not bad, she gets to sit on a high chair all day, shouting at people who do all the things she did as a kid. And, when the weather finally creeps high enough, she gets to perch on a different high chair outside and build up a tan while shouting at all the same people for doing different outdoor misdemeanors.

“My boss hates me,” Niall declares when Louis drops by to see her on the way home from the pool. It’s warm out, her baseball cap is sticking to her sweaty hair, and Niall looks frazzled in the cramped room, relief flooding across her face when she spots Louis then immediately calls for her break.

“You sure you’re not imagining things?” she slips a hand into the pocket of Niall’s jeans, pulls her a little closer. They’re not exactly hidden here, anyone could walk into the toilets at any moment but there’s only one cubicle and Louis hasn’t seen Niall all day, she’s taking the risk. “You know, the heat getting to your head?”

“He keeps calling me “son”,” Niall whines, pitching forward on her toes to catch Louis in a kiss, her tongue pushing into her mouth insistently. Louis closes her eyes, drops her arms around Niall’s neck. She can feel her hat sliding off.

“Mm. There is something distinctly boyish about you,” Louis mumbles when she pulls back, her lips tasting off that strawberry gum Niall has in constant supply in her back pocket. She squeezes Niall’s boob, shushing her when she squawks. “Must be these. Hey, why don’t you flash him?”

Niall giggles, shakes her head. “Can’t give him any reason to fire me. He tells me everyday how much better his son is at carrying plates.”

"And yet you're the one he hired," Louis points out. "He must see some good in you. Do you charm all the customers? Throw the old men some flirty winks when their wives are looking the other way? Hook up with the hot young boys in the loo when you're on your break? Huh?"

"Look who's jealous," Niall sings, laughing when Louis's fingers dig at her waist, pulling her in by her apron. "We're probably the first people to have done anything remotely rebellious on these premises."

Louis blinks innocently. "Are you saying two girls kissing is against the law?"

"My boss probably thinks that. Bloody --" Louis leans in and kisses her again, her fingers slipping to play with the fine hair at the nape of Niall's neck. She feels Niall breathe a hint of moan and then she's being pushed back against the door, their mouths moving lazily under the fluorescent light.

.

“Niall. Hey, Niall. Pick a dog.”

“What? Any dog?”

“Well say one and I’ll see if it’s an available option. So, don’t be too obscure.”

Niall tilts her head to the side, chews her pen lid. “Yorkie.”

Louis squints. “Are yorkies the same as terriers?”

“Dunno. I don’t think so?”

“Right. Pick another one.”

“Umm... German Shepherd.”

Louis scrolls through the next few questions picking the ones she knows Niall would. “You like camping, don’t you?”

“Sure. Never been, though.”

She clicks beach. “Pick an Olympic sport.”

“Swimming.”

“Not an option.”

“Jesus, who doesn’t include swimming? Rowing.”

“Congratulations, you are Barack Obama.”

“I thought this was for what cocktail am I?”

“It is.”

“Obama, huh? We do look very similar. I think we talk the same too.”

“Come to think of it, I’ve never seen the two of you in the same room together.”

Niall looks up from her essay. Winks. “And you never will. Do you now -- bet you get Lincoln.”

She does.

.

It's not until months later that they discuss that first kiss and how it came about. They're walking home after one of Louis's football games, their bags swinging between them like their clasped hands would if they were braver, when Louis finally broaches the subject.

"Why did you kiss me?"

"In the changing rooms? Because you look hot with mud on your face." Louis swings her bag at Niall's knee making Niall yelp and hop away. "How is that the wrong answer?"

"I'm talking about the very first time outside the gym."

"Oh." Niall stops walking for a second, her eyes on the ground, and Louis can feel her heart beating to match the steady sway of her bag. Niall starts walking again. "Remember that time you asked me to practice kissing with you? When were, like, thirteen?" Louis nods, wonders what other similarities they have regarding their sexuality freak-outs, who was Niall's Kiera? "I couldn't stop thinking about you and how you made me feel like I was the luckiest person in the world because I got to be your best friend and then I started thinking about what if we did things that best friends don't usually do, what would that be like, and sometime around fourteen I realised I was pretty much in love with you, as far as I could imagine."

She stops again and when Louis reaches out and tilts her chin up she can see the blush that stains her cheeks. "That sounds the same as me," she says softly. "Except you actually did something about it."

When Niall talks her voice is husky, low enough that Louis has to take another step. "I was going crazy, I just had to go for it even if it meant risking our friendship."

"And look, our friendship is still intact."

"It is."

A boy from a couple of years below passes on a skateboard, whistling at the two of them standing close on the pavement. "Yeaaaah. Kiss her."

Louis takes a step back, rolling her eyes and gesturing to the kid as he careers down the road, laughing loudly all the way round the corner. "Idiot."

She turns back to Niall expecting to see the same exasperation there but she's looking at Louis with a soft little smile curving her lips and there's something in her eyes that tells Louis she should expect what she says next but she doesn't see it coming. "Would it be such a bad thing if people knew?"

She stalls for time. "Knew what?"

"About us." Niall reaches out to touch Louis's hand and Louis lets their fingers curl together for a second before she removes it under the guise of scratching her nose. "No one would care."

"Last month a boy from St. Johns lost a tooth because he came out."

"You've got very good oral hygiene," Niall says. "I wouldn't worry about it."

"Niall, he got beaten up because he told his friend he likes boys." She pauses, looks away from the tilt of Niall's eyebrow. "Imagine what they would do to both of us?" Her heart is beating really fast, she can't stop herself from grabbing Niall's arm to keep her steady. It's just. What they're halfway discussing is something Louis thinks about a lot, it's most of the reason why she wants to move away from this little town to somewhere where they wouldn't be such an anomaly, a target for small-minded people with big mouths. But right here right now it's not the time nor the place.

This all comes out in a ramble that increases in pitch and speed until it's a miracle Niall can understand her at all and then she’s being drawn into a hug, tight enough so that she can feel Niall’s zip digging into her chest. They’re both the same height down to the very last centimetre so she squirms a couple of inches to the right and rests her chin on Niall’s shoulder. She was avoiding this level of contact in public a couple of minutes ago but now she buries her nose in Niall’s neck, breathing in the perfume she wears all the time, and settles for hoping anyone passing by interprets it as best friends helping each other out.

It _is_ best friends helping each other out -- that’s where this all stemmed from and it’s still what’s strong underneath everything else.

"You think about all of that?" Niall mumbles into her hair. "Like, moving away and everything?"

Louis tilts her head so she can see Niall's cheek. When she talks a strand of hair falls into her mouth. "Don't you?"

"I'm more of a focus on the present kinda gal." She attempts a Brooklyn accent that makes Louis giggle.

"Don't you want to get away from this place, Niall? We could have our own place in the city, get jobs, go to school."

"I like the sound of that."

"Yeah? Freedom to do what we want. Doesn't that sound amazing?" The thought of getting out of here always leaves Louis feeling even more trapped than before but Niall is smiling at her and they're going to have to start applying to places in the next few months so _why_ _not_ make this something more than faraway thoughts? Her fingers curl in the sleeves of Niall's hoodie. "I'm sorry for not being up for... you know."

"It's not really any of their business what I think of you, is it?" Niall releases Louis and starts walking again as though they hadn't spent the last ten minutes hugging at the end of someone's driveway. "And you making all these plans for the future involving us tells me we're on the same page, anyway."

.

"Louis? Can you come in here a minute please?" _God_. She takes one biscuit too soon before dinner and it's all kicking off.

"What is it?" she shouts through from the couch. "I have homework."

"Just come though, Louis."

And there's something there, in her mum's voice. It brings a flurry of nerves into her stomach, has her leaving the TV and through to the kitchen.

"Mum?"

Her mum surveys her over the rim of the cup clutched in her hand. She looks tired, worn. "Sit down."

"You're scaring me, Mum," she says as she sinks onto the seat across the table. "Is everything okay?"

There's a watery sort of laugh then. "Everything's fine, more or less. I'm just being dramatic. Okay. Your dad phoned."

"My _dad_?"

“He wants to get back in touch, get to know you a bit.”

“What did you say to that?”

“I said I would pass on the message.”

Louis finds the idea of her dad trying to come back into her life, ten years later, odd. That he was thinking about them, about her. Her mum married Dan when Louis was nine, he’s the only man she’s ever really known enough to call Dad. To imagine the other one, the one that left them, it feels absurd. “Why?”

“Why what, Louis?”

“Why is he asking now? After ten years?” Why wasn’t he here for all the years she might have needed him.

And all her mum does is shrug. “I don’t know, Lou. Maybe he’s just hoping for a second chance.”

“Yeah. Well.” Louis gets to her feet, shoving a pile of papers along the table so they scatter because she has this energy inside of her, a need to do something, wreck something, and there’s nothing around here that will fucking work. “I need to go to work.”

.

She calls him back purely out of curiosity, pushing aside that illogical twinge of disloyalty she's feeling towards Dan. He sounds so forcefully cheery on the phone that Louis has to fight the urge to hold the receiver away from her ear and instead settles for making faces in the mirror across the hall. They set up a date to meet for lunch because that awful tug of needing to know how he turned out after he abandoned them rears its head and says yes without Louis's consent.

The lunch isn't good enough to be called a success but doesn't quite reach disaster level, floating somewhere between the two not unlike the many awkward silences that take hold of the table during the meal. He asks her about school, her career goals, and he struggles hard not to step over the line when she shrugs and says tonelessly that she hasn't thought about the future at all, keeping her primary school teacher ambitions carefully hidden away.

"And your friends?" he asks, crunching on the crisps that decorate the plate around his sandwich. "I think I remember a little blonde girl, is she still around?"

Louis manages a smile for the first time since she walked into the cafe and makes sure her voice is laced with all the correct implications when she says, "Oh, yeah, Niall and I are even closer than ever."

He has hints of grey in his dirty blond hair, some lines at his eyes and mouth, differences from when he left but he looks mostly like she remembers, the blurred memories are coloured slightly by resentment; he's still tall, he still has a dimple in his left cheek that she remembers fitting her finger in to when he would lift her up and make her feel like she could fly, he still wears his shirts untucked from his smart trousers. She had thought he looked so cool when she was younger; now sloppy and trying too hard are what come to mind which maybe is a little harsh, although she wouldn’t know, he left before she could really get to know him.

He goes in for a hug when they part ways on the pavement but Louis steps back smartly, a dog's paw getting in the way, and the ensuing scuffle makes it easy for her to get away with a quick shake of his sweaty hand.

Later after she's relayed all the details to her mum who nods sympathetically and hugs her, telling her she did the right thing, she goes over to Niall's and curls up under the covers. They don't talk for a while, just lie there in their den that's so dark she can only see the hint of Niall's necklace when they create a tiny air hole above their heads.

"He's remarried," Louis whispers into the dark. "He has a new wife and two boys and I don't even _care_ but I --"

"You've moved on with your life but you still feel like you're being replaced in his."

Louis blinks. "You've never mentioned your dad before."

"Between the two of us it's not exactly the happiest topic, is it?"

"What happened with yours?"

She feels Niall shuffle closer, their arms overlapping in the little space they've created. "He emails me on my birthday, tells me he's so proud of me, I'm so much better than my mum."

"Do you reply?"

Niall laughs. It's the bitter one she pulls out when someone says or does something she doesn't like. "I say thanks and ask how his daughter is, she's the same age as me."

"You're right. We shouldn't talk about them anymore."

"I told you."

They fall asleep there, in their homemade den with their bodies tangled together and all of their secrets arranged around them, monster dads and birthday emails jagging into their sides. It’s dark outside the cave when they wake up a few hours later and it’s so easy for their heads to turn the right way, for their mouths to fit together and hands to touch and curve in all the places they know so well now. It’s dark when Louis sucks a bruise onto Niall’s neck, her tongue licking slowly over the mark as her fingers move inside Niall, but if she opens her eyes and cranes her neck she can see the moon through the window. She loves this feeling, the complete intimacy of the action of handling Niall’s body just right to bring her to this rush of happiness, and when Niall comes with a hand squeezing her waist and a soft moan Louis kisses her and knows Niall can tell everything she's thinking, understanding completely.

 

.

Niall bleaches her hair the night before her seventeenth birthday. She stands on Louis's doorstep with the bottle swinging in a plastic bag and the corners of her mouth turned down and Louis pulls her against her like that will fix whatever needs fixing. Niall's elbows are still as pointy as when they were eleven and they were used as weapons. They poke at Louis's ribs where Niall's hands are bunched in her t-shirt and Louis winces and wishes she could do more.

"What's up?" she tries when she's rinsing Niall's hair over the bath and the water running down the drain is loud enough that she can pretend not to hear the question if she wants.

"My mum's being a bitch."

"Yeah? How so?" Louis never used to think of her mother as saintly but in the last couple of years, when compared to Niall's mum's recent agenda to make her daughter miserable, she comes pretty damn close.

"Said it's no surprise I've never had a boyfriend when all I do is hang out with you and fuck around on my guitar." She coughs, the smell getting everywhere. Louis runs a hand across her shoulders. "She called me a dyke, too."

"Oh, Ni." She sits the shower head in the bath and tilts Niall's face towards her. There's that look there again, the one that dulls her eyes and makes her look like she's giving up. Louis wants to wrap the two of them up away from the world. The slightly more practical option is to lean in and press her lips to Niall's gently. "People say shitty things and it sucks, that's the end of it."

"I don't know why it's getting to me so much," Niall whispers. "I mean, it's true. I am a dyke."

"That's not all you are, Niall." The water is still running, unaware of the change of focus. "You're funny and kind and smart and so talented and I love you."

"That makes you one too," Niall says, her voice a monotone that makes Louis's chest tight. "Sorry."

And Louis hugs her close, her hand fitting at her neck where the hair is dampest. "What the fuck are you apologising for? Your mum doesn't know shit, Niall, okay? You're free to do what you want. Fuck her."

Niall moans into Louis's top and then shifts to look up at her, her eyes a little red around the edges. It's fine, Louis's are too. They don't talk about this much, this thing they've had since they were fourteen and scared and curious outside a school dance, but with people getting more and more suspicious every day and with Niall's mum making her feel unsafe in her own home, it's enough for them to cling onto every part of their relationship until they can both breathe a little easier.

"Thanks," is mumbled into Louis's mouth a few minutes later. "I need you, Louis. For so much. It's like --" she breaks away to stare into Louis's eyes, her smile confident when she says, "kinda like we're soulmates, right?"

The thought of their souls being joined as one, that both of them are so perfect for each other that it's been mapped out for them makes the breath catch in Louis's throat. "Yeah. That sounds like us."

Niall kisses her again, her mouth eager and her hands moving quickly to the waistband of Louis's shorts. "After we finish rinsing this out my hair can we take a bath? We’ve not done that before."

Louis wriggles her shorts down her legs, stepping out of them as she checks the door’s locked. “Because my mum and my sisters are downstairs and you can’t keep quiet.”

“I’m emotionally distressed,” Niall insists, unhooking her bra and getting a smudge of bleach on the strap. “Hell, that’s my favourite one. I really am emotionally distressed now.” She cranes her neck back and slots their mouths together. “I can pretend I’m crying and you’re comforting me.”

“Let me rinse the bleach out first. I don’t want to die with you lying on top of me.”

“This is going to look so sick, Lou, and then I was thinking about adding something. Not like that brown streak I tried a few years ago --”

“That was awful,” Louis agrees, aiming the water into Niall’s face when she affects an affronted look.

“No, maybe a few purple bits? Blue?”

Louis cards a hand through her hair. It’s hard to tell when it’s still wet but she thinks she’s done a good job. “Purple would be good.”

“I think that’s it all out now,” Niall says over the water, wriggling away from the showerhead. “Come on. Get in.”

Niall is still here in the morning, her legs curled around Louis’s and her breath hitting her neck every time she exhales. Louis wakes up slowly, her hand brushing Niall's hair when she stretches. She rolls onto her side to poke at the collarbone visible above the collar of Niall's t-shirt. Her finger runs along the bone, up to her cheek before a hand comes up to catch it.

"You're so annoying."

Louis leans in to press a sloppy kiss on Niall's nose. "Wake up. It's your birthday."

"Mm." Niall rolls so her face is in Louis's armpit. "So let me sleep."

The faint yellow bleeding through the blinds tells them the sun is beginning to rise. It's too early to be awake but one of her sisters is going to come barrelling into the room as soon as it hits nine and she wants to start Niall's birthday just the two of them. She lifts a chunk of Niall's new lighter hair, letting it drop through her fingers so it pools on her arm. There's still a bleachy smell to it despite the liberal amounts of mango shampoo used.

"Your hair looks good. Makes you look... fierce."

Right now Niall's nose is smushed against Louis's arm, her fingers curling into Louis's top, her face slack with sleep. There's something there, though, there's always been that something.

“Maybe I’ll finally start that band,” she mumbles.

“Girl power.” Louis runs her thumb across Niall’s cheek, her nail brushing her eyelashes. She can feel lips pressing at the underside of her arm, right where she’s ticklish, but she doesn’t move, waits for Niall to wake up properly. “Open your eyes, birthday girl.”

“Are you naked?” Niall opens her eyes anyway, a smile slowly stretching across her face. There’s a smudge of eyeliner on her cheek. “Where’s my present then?”

Something that Louis has discovered over the last couple of years is that it’s hard to resist kissing Niall Horan when she’s this close to you and looking at you like you hung the stars so she leans in and licks into Niall’s mouth fast and dirty and shocking Niall into letting her roll them over so she’s resting on her thighs. “I haven’t got you anything. Sorry.”

Niall laughs, her hands digging into Louis’s thighs, and kisses her again. “This is good enough for me.”

"You have such low expectations."

"Lucky for you."

Louis kisses down her neck, shucking her top to the side to run her tongue over the bruise she made on her chest last night. Niall's knees come up to bracket Louis's hips, pulling her closer. She tugs at Louis's shorts impatiently, whining low in her throat when Louis just rolls her hips and continues her work on sucking a bruise on underside of Niall's breast. She runs a finger down Niall's stomach, kissing where the skin rises into goosebumps.

"Come on, Lou. You woke me up this early, it's my birthday and I wanna eat you out."

"That's the opposite of how it's supposed to be. It's your birthday so I'm going to make _you_ feel good."

"You know what we could do to that would bring about a win-win situation?" Niall gasps when Louis mouths over a nipple, her tongue twirling, then pulling back to kiss her, her hands cupping her face. "You could turn around and sit on my --"

"We'll do that _later_." They've done that before and it had been mind-blowing. Like. Fucking _incredible_. So, Louis's all up for that, just not right now. She needs more promise of privacy for positions such as that and half eight in the morning with her sisters awake somewhere down the hall is not it, birthday or not. "Now shut up and let me make you happy. It's not every day a girl turns seventeen."

"Yes, ma'am."

.

“Did you know,” Niall says, “that no two giraffes have the same pattern?”

Louis tips her head back over the end of the bench, catching the squint that tells her Niall is trying to remember every giraffe she’s ever seen and mentally comparing their markings. “Tell me more,” she drawls, her mouth opening in a yawn. A hand comes down to press at her chin, the fingers sticky with peach yoghurt. “You’re disgusting.”

“And you’re being rude about my animal facts.”

“I don’t care.”

Niall leans back to lie along the top of the picnic table, her head level with Louis’s. She sighs. “I’ve never seen a giraffe in real life.”

“Neither have I.” Louis's falling asleep here. This trip has been productive in exactly zero ways. She sits up and rolls down her socks; if they’ve collected all their plant data and no one else has she might as well take the time before the bus comes back to work on her tan. “We’ll go one day. When I get my car I’ll take you to the zoo, alright?”

“Jesus. I want to see one before I’m middle-aged.”

Louis waves her hand above her dismissively. "I'm almost there. A couple more months."

"Should've picked the cafe like me."

"Ah but at the pool I get to sit and do nothing all day. Plus, I get a whistle whereas you have a hairnet."

"That was one time," Niall whines. "It was a joke."

"Yeah. That's what it was." She laughs when Niall's hand touches her face again, her fingers skimming over her cheek to tangle in her hair. She wonders sometimes, what everyone thinks of them, if anyone talks about the way their bodies are always not quite touching when they're together, how neither of them have had a boyfriend. It's something that can be added up easily to get to four. "You're coming to that party tonight, aren't you?"

A finger tugs at her ear gently, wrapping a strand of hair around to pull it tight. "Probably, yeah. Not gonna drink that much, but. I'm working at nine."

"You always say that and it never happens." She leans into it, her eyes shutting. "Zayn says his sister can get us some more vodka if you want."

"Well I've still got a half bottle under my bed, might be something else under there, too, and you didn't finish that tequila last time. I know you don't like tequila but booze is booze, right?"

"I'll drink your vodka," she says decisively. "And I'll tell Zayn we're good, then?"

"Yeah. Tell him we're good."

She cracks open one eye to look up at Niall who is staring down at her with that smile on her face like she can't really believe her luck. Louis feels her lips bend to match, that ever-present feeling of happiness bubbling up inside of her until she feels like she can barely breathe. This thing with Niall, this whole set-up, it's more than she could ever have dreamed of. Her hand finds Niall's, still lost in her hair, and holds on tight.

.

Louis loves parties. She likes putting on a nice dress and heels and dancing and dancing until her feet hurt and she has to find someone to lean on as the world spins around her. Her favourite thing, though, is that everyone is so trashed they don’t notice Louis’s fingers circled around Niall’s wrist or the way she leans into Niall’s side, her lips so close to Niall’s cheek  in some whisper no one cares about that she can taste the perfume she watched her put on an hour ago. Hiding in plain sight, she thinks that’s what it is.

Or maybe everyone is seeing everything exactly as it is and she’s just too drunk to care.

Like now, as Niall tugs her into an empty room at the end of the hall, she follows with a laugh, lurching forward and kissing Niall before they’ve got the door shut. Niall tastes of apple Sourz and there’s a trace of vodka on her tongue that Louis chases away with her own as her hands fumble at the hem of Niall’s skirt searching for the zip, moaning impatiently when she can’t get it free.

“I dunno why we bother coming to these things,” Niall mumbles, ducking to press her lips at Louis’s neck, her fingers tracing circles on her hips. “We could’ve been doing this in my room.”

“But the demanding public, darling.” They stumble across to the bed, Louis's back hitting the mattress, her hands round Niall's neck pulling her on to her, and this, when she can feel Niall's touch all over her and she can feel their chests pressed together, their legs intertwined, this is when she feels like she could do anything.

She kisses Niall hard, helps her push her skirt down her legs and then to the ground, arches her back and rolls their hips together when Niall's hand finds its way up her dress to press between her legs. The party's loud outside the door, people shouting, singing but Louis feels part of their own world in here, her hands in Niall's hair when she shuffles down and puts her face on her, mouth moving enthusiastically making Louis squirm and push her face down further, getting Niall to put her tongue just _there_.

"Hey, not so quick," she laughs, the sound coming out shaky. "We're not on a time limit."

Niall blinks up at her from under her fringe, her eyes wide. "Gonna make you come more than once."

That makes Louis laugh again and then sigh when Niall's head ducks back down, fingers slipping into her. "I see. Carry on, then."

She comes with a startled cry when Niall adds a third finger as she sucks on her clit, the rushing in her ears pulling her away from the noise of the party, her hands clumsy when they reach for Niall, pulling her in for a kiss. "You're very good at that," she says into Niall's mouth, licking the taste of herself from her tongue.

Niall rolls them over so she's on her back with Louis's thighs either side of her hips. "I’ve had a lot of practice.” She tilts her head back to give Louis easier access to her neck, sighing when she reaches the spot just under her collarbone that makes her eyes flutter.

"We should’ve stayed at home,” Louis mumbles, sucking a kiss onto Niall’s hip. “I can hear Courtney crying from here.”

“We don’t have long left here. Might as well -- fuck, Lou. Might as well make the most of it.”

Louis’s lips feel sticky when she smoothes lip balm over them, digging in Niall’s pocket for the red lipstick she keeps meaning to buy herself. She hooks an arm round Niall’s neck and drags her in for another kiss, smudging the red so she has to start again when she pulls away. Her phone buzzes on the floor over beside her shoes by the door and by the time she’s reached it Niall is fully dressed and swigging from a beer bottle.

“Gross. That could’ve been anyone’s.” Louis wrinkles her nose, clicking into her texts. “Zayn’s looking for us.”

“Yeah he text me too. Says we should tell him before we go home to fuck. And beer’s beer, who cares who drank from it last.”

“Don’t come crying to me when you get an incurable disease.” She checks herself in the mirror one last time, decides they pass for innocently dishevelled, and leads the way back into the corridor which seems to increase in volume the more steps they take. “I’m glad we told Zayn.”

“Me too. I felt guilty for keeping it from him for so long.” Niall nods at a couple leaning against the wall beside the stairs, waves at a group of girls sat in a circle. Louis takes a drink from the bottle in Niall’s hand.

Zayn had been... well, _Zayn_ about the whole secret relationship thing. He had nodded and smiled and made a lot of comments about supporting them and how it made a lot of little things make sense which Louis hadn't brought herself to ask about because it would just add files to that folder concerning unnecessary worry about the outside perspective of her relationship with Niall. It's been a couple of months and the extent of the three of them talking about it has been a few jokes about them going off to fuck when they suddenly disappear from parties and the odd comment about support again whenever there's news about a hate crime somewhere. He's a good friend, Zayn, he deserves a bit of romance too.

“Once he stops making jokes and complaining about us abandoning him all the time maybe he’ll follow our example and do something about Perrie.”

"Pigs will fly before that happens, Lou."

.

“This car is a shit heap.” Niall kicks an empty bottle away from her feet and crams her bag into the space left, slamming the door shut then trying it again when it doesn't work the first time.

“You can take your opinion and walk,” Louis says as she shifts into gear, the tyres squealing a little when she shoots down the street. She loves this car and she will love it forever after the hours and hours and _hours_ put in at the pool to pay for it.  

"Your bumper's almost falling off," Niall points out as she slides her sunglasses on. "Gum?"

"The key word there is _almost_. And yes, gimme."

Niall bats her hand away. "Don't take your eyes off the road," she says, which is insulting coming from her because she's the worst driver Louis has ever met. She opens her mouth to say so but Niall is leaning over the console, her fingers slipping into Louis's mouth to push the gum onto her tongue. She licks at Niall's finger, her lips closing over the tip before Niall can pull them back, her thumb soft on her cheek. "Hey."

"Hey yourself. Did you do those questions for Smith?"

The groan tells her all she needs to know. "I was going to ask _you_."

"Niall, when was the last time I did my History homework?" She flicks her indicator to turn right, tapping the wheel while they wait for the lights to change. Out of the corner of her eye she can see Niall rifling through her glove compartment sending CDs tumbling to the floor. Niall complains about the state of her car and yet she's the one that got it into this mess. _Partly_ the one who got it into this mess. "Oi. Watch those."

"Where's that one with the girl on the front? With the colours?"

"A stunning description. 10/10."

" _You know_. The one with the song."

“No, I don’t know. Stick this one on.” She grabs the first disc she touches and whoops when it turns out to be  _Sunny Side Up._

“But I hate Paolo Nutini,” Niall whines before falling into singing the first song word for word. “Look! I’ve been _brainwashed_.”

“Brainwashed with love and the beautiful croon of a beautiful man.”

There’s no spaces anywhere near the main building because Louis was running late and because Louis is always running late the walk across the car park is a familiar one. She yanks her tie out of her bag and fumbles to knot it on the way through the gates just as Mr Watson makes his way across the tarmac.

“Morning, girls. Nice to see you here on time for once.”

“Ready and eager to learn, sir," Louis replies, tugging an end of the tie down and then sighing and starting the whole thing again.

"See and make a habit of appearing before the warning bell then," he calls over his shoulder on the way into the P.E block.

“Of course, sir!” Niall says, leading Louis over to the door into English. “I’ll see you at break, alright? Oh, and good luck on that Business test.”

“Thanks for remembering,” Louis rolls her eyes. She waves bye then hurries back the way she came, starting a third attempt on her tie before taking it off and shoving it back into her bag.

Everyone’s already there by the time she gets to her class, leaving her with the only available seat left right up at the back behind Elliot. She tried to study for this test, she likes Business, but some of the sections are so boring. Watching _The Office_ constitutes as revision, right? Toby Flanderson has taught her everything she needs to know about Human Resources. He tries, Toby, he does.

She doodles all down the side of the first page before she even takes a look at the questions. They're almost done with school, a few more weeks to go, they're so close it's hard to concentrate on what's right in front of her. The first question is easy, the second a little harder, and the third she misses out altogether with plans to come back to it at the end. There's her Human Resources question at number five; she rambles a bit here, comes very close to mentioning Michael Scott and then she comes very close to laughing when she remembers the episode where he burned his foot on his grill.

When she goes back to number three at the end there's only five minutes left so she scribbles down something that sounds vaguely correct and then crosses her arms and rests her eyes for the remaining two minutes. She can't stand it when people go over tests as soon as they're over so she dodges the oncoming questions when the bell goes and heads to the toilets before anyone can have her doubting her answers.  

"How'd it go?" Zayn asks when she finds him and Niall a few minutes later. He offers her his crisps and she grabs a handful, chewing through her answer. "Alright. Not a completely fail, anyway."

"Beautiful optimism," Niall crows, throwing an arm around her and pulling her into the seat beside her. "You're going to get top marks."

"And that's unrealistic optimism," Louis laughs, rolling her eyes. "Remember the episode of The Office where Michael burns his foot on the George Forman grill?"

"And Dwight gets concussion trying to save him? Best episode."

"A good episode, yes," Niall nods solemnly, "but not the best ever."

"Yeah?" Zayn rocks his chair onto its back two legs. If Louis didn't know him so well she would be sighing constantly at the aura of coolness Zayn seems to give off. She knows all his secrets, though, so. "The greatest episode then?"

"I always love the ones with the Michael Scott Paper Company."

"Idris Elba was in those ones," Louis remembers. "Very beautiful."

"Catherine Tate's great when she comes into it."

"Threat Level Midnight!" Louis _cried_ with laughter at that one.

"The one when Michael hits Meridith with his car is a good one," Zayn adds, giggling at the thought.

"One of the greatest shows of our time."

Lous steals another handful of crisps, passing a couple to Niall.

"Those are _my_ crisps."

"Oh, look, there's Perrie. Hi!"

"Z, did you just fall off your chair?"

"You are the uncoolest person I have ever met."

.

Louis has thrown up six times in the last hour. She hasn't eaten in a long time. She thinks she might be dying.

Her mum diagnoses her with a 24-hour bug and says she can't go to the party at Amy's tonight, which Louis wasn't really planning on going to, considering the constant puking and all.

So she lies in her bed for a while and then she takes to lying on the floor of the bathroom which is a lot more logical because it cuts out a lot of time when she feels the telltale lurch of her stomach that has her groaning and grabbing onto the cool ceramic of the toilet.

She's working on calculating the exact number of footsteps to her bed when her phone vibrates loudly on the floor just beside her ear.

"'lo?"

"Louis!"

"Shh."

"Aw yeah, how you feeling?"

She hasn't thrown up in at least forty six minutes. "I'm maybe a four and a half, possibly a five."

"Hey that's good. That's almost halfway!"

"Mm. How's it?"

The noise she could hear in the background fades away; Niall's voice lowers accordingly. "Alright. Not much happening, it's not as good without you."

"We're getting too co-dependent," Louis says with a smile.

"That ship sailed a while ago I think." Niall's voice sounds warm in her ear, like she's right here in the room. She closes her eyes and leans against the bath. "Listen, I remembered why I phoned you!"

"It wasn't just to hear my voice?"

"Zayn and Perrie pulled!"

If she sits up too fast she'll get a head rush, she knows this. "Ow. _What_?"

"I watched it happen. He just -- fuck, Lou, he just _went_ for it."

"Ah, Zayn. He doesn't do anything by half, does he? What's he doing now?"

"They just disappeared! I'm seeing how it feels now a bit, when we do that."

"Well he has someone to keep him company now when we do it. Did Perrie look like she was into it?"

"From what I could see from across the room she was very much into it. Louis, Zayn did it."

"I feel like a proud mother. Oh. Shit. Wait here a minute I'm gonna puke --"

"Zayn and Perrie have their new romance full of roses and feeling pretty and I'm leaning against a wall watching a boy trying to stick his tongue down a girl's throat and listening to you throw up -- quite spectacularly from what I can _hear_."

"Thanks for giving me the big news. Go drink some beer and be merry."

"And now I don't even get a proper goodbye," Niall laments. Louis can _see_ the way her mouth is curved down in an exaggerated frown.

"Love you, Ni."

"Yeah, whatever, I love you too."

.

By half one her 24 hours must be up given that she hasn't felt the urge to be sick in over two hours and it doesn't feel like her body is trying to pull her down anymore. She celebrates by brushing her teeth three times and sipping water while watching She's All That.

Her phone buzzes just as the prom is starting. "Niall?"

"Louis!"

"Are you home? You didn't get lost again, did you?"

"You promised you wouldn't laugh at that, Lou."

"Okay. I'm sorry. How drunk are you?"

"Hmm. Six. Or seven and a quarter."

"You don't sound that bad."

"Why don't you come down and see?"

Her bed is warm, she's comfy, the film's at her favourite part, but her feet move towards the floor. "Where are you?"

"Our song is the slamming screen door... reaaaaal slow."

Louis pulls her hoodie on and tiptoes down the stairs. When she opens the front door Niall is sitting on the step with a bottle cradled in her hands, humming softly.

"They're not the words." She nudges at Niall with her foot, smothering her laugh in her hand when Niall almost falls off her perch. "What are you doing here? Go to bed."

"But I wanted to see you?"

"You don't sound sure about that."

"Well I _am_." Niall gets to her feet, holding onto Louis's thigh for support. "Have you been sick again? Can I kiss you?"

She loops her arms around Louis's neck and kisses her clumsily, her tongue pressing at the seam of Louis's lips and then a burst of laughter has her giggling into Louis's cheek. "You're so funny, Lou."

"I know." She kisses Niall softly with a hand at the base of her back so she can guide the two of them inside. When the door closes with a click she reaches behind to lock it, leading Niall up the stairs. "Come to bed, okay?"

"Okay. I'm not actually that drunk, you know."

"I know." When Niall drinks her cheeks always get a little flushed and she gets even more handsy than normal. She might not be drunk at the moment but she's definitely a few drinks away from sober so Louis takes off her shoes, her skirt and top and pulls her into bed. They're good for each other, see, they know exactly what to do for the other, it's one of the perks of teetering on the wrong side of co-dependency.

.

Niall rolls over, her limbs jostling Louis in every place reachable: her face, her shin, her boobs. A hand comes down to rest on Louis's chest, cool enough to bring a shiver. She shifts and moves closer to Niall, fitting into the gaps created by the spread-eagled position. Niall's awful at sharing beds. Niall's always been awful at sharing beds.

There's a snuffle and then Louis is being moved again, a leg wrapping around her waist. "Niall," she hisses, like that will do any good at all. A jab at the ribs. "Move over."

She gets a garble of nothing at that, lips forming nonsense words in the pitch of a whine. Rolling her eyes Louis gives in and pulls Niall closer against her, searching for the heat somewhere between their two bodies.

.

"I can do so many things now I'm eighteen," Niall grins, biting into her sandwich and mumbling through the next part. "I can gamble, Lou. Want me to put a bet on for you?"

"Nah I want you get a tattoo of my name on your hip."

Niall reaches across the table, her hand on top of Louis's. "For you, babe, anything. Did you have a particular font in mind?"

"That one school teachers use when they're trying to be edgy and cool by avoiding Comic Sans -- Papyrus."

"You have good taste, babe. We'll stop into the nearest tattoo parlour on the way home, okay?"

Louis stuffs three crisps into her mouth; chokes a little when a sharp edge cuts her throat on the way down. "Sure. This is your day."

"And I have to spend it at _this place_ ," she sighs, swallowing the rest of her sandwich and moving onto Louis's crisps. "Neil got me a card."

"See. I told you he'd warm up to you eventually."

"I've been working here for _two_ _years_."

"I also told you to come and work with me at the pool and you refused so don't even go there."

"You once told me I'm very loyal. I must subconsciously feel loyalty towards Neil. Anyway, enough sad stuff, I only have two hours left until I'm free -- what else can I do now I'm a legal adult?"

"You can... get away from any family obligations and meet me at eight?" She's planned this thing. It's not really a Thing, it's just a bit different from what they usually do, meaning it requires a certain level of money and class.

She's known Niall for thirteen years now but when she beams like that and her whole face lights up Louis still feels as though she's looking at the sun. It can be argued the over the years her feelings towards her best friend have taken her down paths she never expected, introduced her to a whole new array of experiences and emotions making them vastly different from their younger selves, but when she smiles at her like that they could be the two five year olds who met on their first day of school.

"I'll meet you at ten to, babe."

"I've told you so many times to stop calling me that."

"See you later, babe."

On the train they play Eye-Spy which they both cheat at and then half the carriage glares at them when they start yelling at each other for their ridiculous answers and Jesus, Louis tries to do something nice and this is what happens.

The restaurant has low lighting and futuristic chairs and fancy cocktails that they get away with ordering despite Louis being underage by batting her eyelids and shifting so her dress slips down a centimetre and the waiter forgets to check for I.D. They order different ones, a Purple Rain for Louis, a Long Island Iced Tea for Niall, and swap halfway through.

The tequila in the Iced Tea makes Louis’s head spin and her tongue loose. She reaches over and holds Niall’s hand and the smile she gets in return makes her heart feel three sizes too big, shitty clichés are clichés for a reason. This is what it could be like all of the time, this is what it _will_ be like when they eventually get out of the place they grew up.

“You’re so important to me, Niall,” she says. It’s something she thinks about all the time but she’s never said out loud. “You’re my best friend and we’ve been through everything together and you make me feel so happy.”

“God, Lou, you’re making me blush.” But she’s smiling and so is Louis and for a moment she wonders what they look like to other people in here, two teenage girls staring into each other's eyes and grinning, and then she realises she doesn’t care.

“I love you,” Niall says as they’re having dessert. “As a best friend, as everything.”

Louis leans over and kisses her right there, tasting the chocolate from her cake, and her heart is beating so loud and fast but she’s happy.

It starts raining as they're walking back from the station and it's dark enough for the streetlights to flicker on, the reflections shimmering in the puddles when Louis steps around them, her heel catching the edge.

The drops get heavier and suddenly it's pouring and they're soaked and the only thing to do is stop in the middle of the street and dance, the alcohol making them warm and past common sense.

“This is like something out of a fucking Taylor Swift song,” Louis laughs, her head tipping back as they spin. Niall whoops and lets go of her hands to skip into a puddle across the road, stomping so water sprays up her legs. The laugh of delight makes Louis smile so big it hurts and this is ridiculous it’s raining and it’s September and they’re probably going to have colds for a week but that sound Niall makes like this is everything she’s ever wanted has Louis over beside her and pulling her in for a messy, wet kiss that brings a shiver down her back and has her grasping at Niall’s jacket to bring her even closer, her hands tangling in NIall’s wet hair, feeling it on her neck, her chest.

They’re out in the street, anyone could see them, but Louis doesn’t care, she loves Niall and Niall loves her and they’re best friends and they feel _alive_.

 

.

 

 

Niall dies at 3.56am on a Friday morning. Brain haemorrhage.

It was sudden, so sudden Niall didn’t even know what was happening. There was nothing that could have been done.

Louis gets told these things four times on Friday, twice again on Saturday.

She holds the words inside her when she’s curled under her covers, her brain flicking from nothing to every smile Niall ever gave her and back again.

She can’t remember the last thing she said to her, hopes it was something nice, positive it was but she’s not sure anymore, and she can’t remember what side of her mouth was quirked up in one of those stupid half grins she did sometimes when she looked at Louis.

The smell of her hair is slipping from her memory, tumbling further away as Louis tries to grab for it, and she can’t remember what the last joke she told her was or what she was wearing when she left Louis’s house the night before.

She can’t remember what her hips had felt like under Louis’s hands or what flavour of lip gloss she had been wearing the last time they kissed.

She presses her hands over her ears and tries to think, a broken sob falling out when everything comes up black.

It’s been three days and Louis is falling.

The funeral is full of those awful sympathetic head-tilts and grimaces, mouths spilling out phrases like  _it’s a terrible loss_ and _i’m so sorry_ and _a tragedy this young._ They tell her they don’t possibly know how she’s feeling, like they don’t know that Louis isn’t feeling anything at all.

Louis hasn't spoken in four days now and anyway how could she possibly put into words the hole in her chest and the ache at the back of her throat that makes her think she'll never talk again.

Her brother stands behind the lectern. Louis can see his hands shaking. He came in from the city on the Friday, hungover, eyes red with tears. Louis had been there when he'd come through the door, when his dad had held him while his mum stood off to the side, that lost expression the same as the one she has now. She hadn't spoken to him for two years since he moved away for college but when he pulled away from his dad he had hugged her so tight she could barely breathe, her arms somehow finding their way around his waist. She could feel his face in her hair and she knew he was trying to find her there, some smell to cling on to, because she was doing the same. He had smelled of beer and sweat and the disappointment had been so strong she had swayed on the spot.

.

She sleeps a lot.

She sleeps so much her mum gets worried, not that was she wasn’t frantic already, trying not to show that she’s terrified one of her children will be snatched away from her so easily. She perches on the end of her bed like she’s not sure if she’s allowed any closer, making hesitant noises about talking to someone, that things will get better.

“I’m so worried about you, sweetheart. Niall was like a daughter to me, you know that. I couldn’t lose both of you, don’t make me lose both of you.”

She asks her mum for some banana toast, the comfort food she always craved when she was off sick school, and when her mum comes back with the toast cut up into neat little triangles she has closed her eyes again, dreaming of summers stretched out on the grass, her toes painted polka-dots and Niall’s arm warm against hers.

.

They were going to move away, start a life together away from everyone around here. They had spent nights sprawled on their bedroom floors discussing jobs and transport and when would be the best time to leave. They were going to get a little apartment in the city and go to university: Louis to do primary education, Niall, music. They had all of these _plans_.

Now it's like this: Niall is forever newly an adult, eternally eighteen, and Louis, she’s eighteen and a half with no desire to get out of bed. There's all the tragedy in poems and films about dying young, a heartbreaking plot device overused for entertainment. It comes nothing close to real life. Louis thinks if she had to write a poem, right here right now, it would be a question mark, that's it.

.

Two months pass.

She sits out in the back garden sometimes now, when the sun is high in the sky and the breeze is cool enough for goosebumps to cover her arms and legs.

“Fancy helping me put up this washing?” Her mum asks a while later. Her voice doesn’t sound so far away as it's been recently. Louis must be nearing the surface. She feels herself get to her feet before the question can compute fully. “Try and make sure Fizz’s jeans get the most light -- she’s got grass stains on the knees that I can’t get out.”

How odd, Louis thinks, pulling out one blue peg after another. Her best friend is dead but there are still other things to worry about. She wonders what Moira worries about now that she doesn’t have a daughter. She has a son still but it’s not quite the same. Louis’s mother would still be set if Louis suddenly disappeared, she still has another four girls to think about their safety or if their dress is too short and just who will be walking them home at night. Niall’s mum didn’t think much about Niall’s safety towards the end.

“Louis? Honey, what are you doing with all those?”

She looks down to see her hands full of blue pegs, the basket looking curiously dull with only the grey coloured ones left. She closes her hands tight so she can feel all the little spikes and edges dig into her skin, harder and harder until her mum’s hands pull them apart gently, tipping the pegs back into the box.

“Oh, Louis.” She hugs her then. Louis doesn’t know how to react, just stands there stiffly for a while until something at the back of her brain yells the instructions at her and her arms bend at the elbows to trap her mum’s waist. “It’ll get better,” her mum is saying into her ear. “Eventually, it’ll get better.”

Aren't mothers always supposed to be right?

.

If Louis had been the one who died suddenly from a severe underlying health problem she wants to know how Niall would have coped. If she had moved on after a few months, keeping Louis alive by following through with their travel plans and driving the car Louis’s mum would no longer have a use for. She thinks she might have chosen the same option as Louis, although by calling it an option that implies a conscious decision was made to pick this state of drifting through the day, not focusing on anything or thinking past the next minute. She knows Niall would have gone down this path because Niall called them soulmates once and Niall had loved Louis so fiercely and so openly it feels like an insult to consider that she wouldn’t fall apart with Louis’s death.

.

It’s been four and a half months now.

She’s getting better at acting. She can walk down the street and nod when people speak to her, even manage a small smile that feels like it might bend her in two. Her mum still watches her out the corner of her eye as though she might pick up a knife and stick it in her throat and Lottie has stopped the constant offerings of tea. When Louis opens her door in the morning, though, she more often than not finds her foot in a lukewarm mug and she feels something twinge inside of her that she thinks might be gratitude.

It’s not all an act. Some days she wakes up and it’s cloudy outside and she feels like there’s something past this, if only she can get through the next day and the one after that and on and on and then she’ll be alright again.

.

The stupid voicemail message is still there when Louis, a half bottle of vodka tucked in at her side, tries the number.

"Niall! Shit -- I missed the start again, Lou, how do I try this again? Fuck. I'll just leave it. Leave a message?"

She holds the phone in one hand, takes a gulp of vodka with the other, and hangs up to call again. People always do this in films, don't they? They hang onto that last connection through a contact message. She's seeing the good in it when she catches the lilt of Niall's voice, the sharp edges of the _fuck_ and the laugh hidden at the end.

She re-dials again, her fingers trembling. When the beep sounds she takes another drink and starts talking. "Niall. It's been a while since we last spoke. I couldn't tell you the exact number of days, I'm not very good with details at the moment. I'm not very good at a lot of things, you could say. You said once that we were soulmates, do you remember that? Course you do. So tell me, Ni. Niall. Tell me what I'm supposed to do now. And could you also please tell me where you are? I believed in God for about five minutes back when I was shitting myself over those thoughts I had about you... I thought he was punishing me by making me fail maths." An ugly sound crawls out of her throat then. "Ha. He must've just been warming up, eh? Back to my earlier question, Niall. What the fuck do I do now?"

.

****  


It’s Niall’s mum who suggests the therapist. She comes over one afternoon five months and three days after the day Niall died and when Louis refuses to come out of her room -- she has these days sometimes when the thought of sunlight and humans makes her want to claw off her skin, but they’re getting less and less frequent, she can’t actually remember the last one before today, so, silver linings -- she gives the card to Louis’s mum and tells her to tell Louis that she finds it really helps having someone to sit there and listen to everything you want to say.

She refuses to even entertain the thought for at least another month. To put her mum off the trail she picks up university prospectuses and dog-ears the pages for social work, archaeology, biochemistry. Then she goes out and asks for her old job, insists she can handle it, she’s sorry about all the time off. They put her in the back room with all the paperwork. She understands; she wouldn’t want to be saved by someone who feels like the life is draining out of them bit by bit.

Her mum kisses her cheek every morning when they both leave for work, she’s so proud of her, a bit of routine will help her get back on her feet.

It’s when Louis is looking for her lifeguard certificate under her bed that she finds an old t-shirt Niall used to borrow when she slept over until it eventually became hers.

She pulls it out and sits there holding it for so long it grows dark outside and she can’t even see it anymore but she can’t look away. It smells stale, not a hint of Niall clinging to the fabric.

The next morning she tells her mum she’s made an appointment with the therapist -- Thursday, 3pm.

.

Louis goes to sessions once a week, every Thursday at 3pm, and she doesn’t want to jinx anything but she thinks they’re working. She doesn’t mention the full extent of the relationship she had with Niall until week four when she breaks and talks about how Niall was her first for everything and how hard it is to look beyond and try and find seconds that could possibly come anywhere close to her. It feels liberating to tell another person how much she loved Niall, how it feels like her heart has split in two right down the middle and Louis has been left with the smaller piece. The therapist lets her talk and talk, prompting her gently when a silence lapses. She doesn't say "and how do you feel about that?" or "what do you think that means?" which Louis is grateful for since she doesn't think she could answer either.

The closest she can get is that she was broken and now she's collecting up the pieces she can find and hesitantly putting them back together. She keeps getting the pieces mixed up, they don't always fit together like she remembers, and when she tries to force one back in place she feels a jarring in her chest.

.

Louis sits down with her mum. Just sits there for a few moments and in those minutes she watches her mum filter through half a dozen emotions before she settles on tentative relief. Her mother doesn’t do tentative, she does strong and bold and comforting. Louis did this to her, made her worry every minute of every day. She didn’t do it intentionally, she was caught up with the loss of a huge part of her, it still feels like she’s missing half of her body, half of her brain, but she caused the lines around her mum’s eyes and there’s a special sort of guilt and regret for that.

So they sit there for a few minutes and then: “I’ve found a couple of courses I’m interested in for next year. I don’t know how I’ll be by then, if it’s even a good idea, but they won’t start for almost a year, and I don’t -- I don’t want to still feel like this for much longer.”

It’s the closest she can get to an apology at the moment.

She asks for a Friday off work a few weeks before the day Niall would have turned nineteen and takes a trip into the city. The printed out map and information get folded over and over again on the way there until there are so many creases the words are barely legible.

She phones her mum afterwards and tells her all about the giraffe in the zoo that is now Louis's adoptive child, or however it works out when you sign up to donate a certain amount a year, and she laughs for one of the first times without feeling guilty for being cautiously happy in a world without Niall. She'll get her name on a plaque beside the enclosure along with all the other donors and Niall will too because she’s the reason she did it at all. She'll visit the zoo a couple of times a year and then when she gets her degree she'll take her class on trips at the end of term where she'll introduce them to Diego: her giraffe. She'll keep going to her sessions every Thursday for a long time because it's a huge thing falling in love with your best friend and it's indescribable trying to pick yourself back up when you lose her. She'll sleep with someone else for the first time when she's almost twenty one and she'll meet a girl when she's twenty three who she thinks she'll want to do more with than just fuck. It sounded impossible that Friday morning when her mum told her the news that made her mind shift into black and white for a long time, that she could build back some semblance of a life, but she’ll do it, slowly, gradually, she’ll pick up the pieces and move on.


End file.
